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The Poetics of Charles Simic University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2004 World of objects| The poetics of Charles Simic Siobhan Scarry The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Scarry, Siobhan, "World of objects| The poetics of Charles Simic" (2004). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 4113. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4113 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. M lVÏ3uiii&eB:ui(l]V%ihùe TklAüPfiSlPIOBIIjl) ILJTEEiaLALlirk' The University of Montana Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. **Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature** Yes, I grant permission ^ No, I do not grant permission__________ Author's Signature: ^ —r Date : - s ' j i /oy____________ Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent. «86 A World of Objects: The Poetics of Charles Simic by Siobhan Scarry B.A. University of Arizona, Tucson 1995 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The University of Montana May 2004 Approved by erson Dean, Graduate School ù i j / ?/'%____________ Date UMI Number: EP35309 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT UMI EP35309 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProOuesf ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Scarry, Siobhan M.A., May 2004 Literature A World of Objects: The Poetics of Charles Simic Director: Bob Baker Charles Simic once remarked that "it" was the most interesting word in the language. His fascination with the world of objects is an integral part of his poetics and of his metaphysics as well. Simic's poems are filled with forks and spoons, crumbs and mangy dogs, children's toys, and of course, stones. This study seeks to examine the ontological and metaphysical inquiries at work in Charles Simic's poetry as they manifest themselves in the world of objects. I will argue that Simic's investigation into this territory is significant not only because it comprises such a considerable part of his poetics - his fascination with objects remaining a subject of sustained inquiry throughout his career - but also for the ways his work may call into question the extent to which critics have tended to separate those literatures focusing on the transcendent from those dwelling on the "here and now." His studies of the mundane objects of everyday life point paradoxically to the beyond, linking him with the romantic tradition of the lyric even as his work is of an immanentist and contemporary ilk. In order to ground my understanding of Simic's work and its metaphysics of objects, I will be pulling from diverse philosophical and critical texts, including Charles Altieri's study of postmodern poetics, Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought, and the fifty years of criticism surrounding the poet's work. While all of Simic's oeuvre will be considered, particular attention will be paid to his book of prose poems. The World Doesn't End. n It, it, I keep calling it. An affinity of "it" without a single antecedent - like a cosmic static in my ear. - Charles Simic (FIS 181) 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1 : Situating Simic in Contemporary Poetry 6 Biographical Context 6 What the Critics Say 11 Resituating Simic in Contemporary Poetics 16 Chapter 2: The Immanent Beyond: Objects in The World Doesn't End 21 A Formal Invitation 21 First Poem & Lasting Ideas 23 The Immanence of Objects 27 Objects of Poverty & The Poverty of Objects 28 Absolute Paradox: Simic and Metaphysics 36 Longing Nonetheless: Simic's Absent Speakers 52 Conclusion 60 Works Cited 63 IV INTRODUCTION Dear Mr. Simic: ... You're obviously a sensible young man, so why do you waste your time by writing about knives, spoons, and forks? In the late 1950's, poet Charles Simic began publishing his work in small literary journals, but more often than not during this period, his work was returned to him with rejection slips; the above note was scribbled on a rejection that Simic received in 1965 from an editor of a now-forgotten journal (NLH 217). Almost fifty years later, with over sixty books to his name - twenty-five of them volumes of poetry - Charles Simic has developed into one of the most important and enigmatic contemporary North American poets. In 1990 his collection The World Doesn't End received the Pulitzer Prize, the first collection of prose poems to ever win this prestigious award. That collection, and all his others, are filled with forks and spoons, crumbs and mangy dogs, children's toys, and of course, stones. Simic's fascination with the world of objects, the here and now of existence, is an integral part of his poetics and of his metaphysics as well. Though the explicit "object meditations" that characterized his early work gave way to other kinds of poems, Simic never relinquished his fascination with objects.' Critics have tended to pay a good deal of attention to his early object meditations, mostly as evidence of his curious beginnings or to bolster claims that Simic works in the surrealist vein, but few have ' He did, in fact, find a home in 1969 for his poems "Fork," "Spoon," and "Knife." All three poems can be found in Simic's collection Somewhere Among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes. explored or sufficiently emphasized the ways in which objects have remained an integral part of Simic's poetic practice, and in fact, no extended study of this matter exists to date. This study aims to fill that gap. In a recent interview, when asked about the everyday objects in his poems, Simic remarks on their primacy to his work: The visual presences of these simple things have always meant a great deal to me. It's where I begin. In the spirit of William Carlos Williams's famous line, "No ideas but in things." Everything begins with the rock-bottom reality, which is the reality in front of my nose. The table, the teacup - for me, writing always has to begin with something concrete - and ideas come out of that later. I never trust ideas first. I never begin a poem because I have an idea. But it's always some kind of experience - an experience which is tied to a physical place, some object, some image - they're the ones that make the poem begin to be written. (Ratiner 83) Objects in Simic's poems, as he himself attests in the above quote, are important in his process, often acting as the impetus for his work, but they are also frequent sites of ontological and metaphysical inquiry in his poems. His explorations of objects are, in fact, defining features of a poetics that is entirely his own; Simic works within the tradition of the immanentist aesthetics of presence while also investigating the silence of the beyond. Simic's fascination with objects is significant, then, not only because it comprises such a considerable part of his poetics, but also for the ways in which his work may call into question the extent to which critics have tended to separate those literatures focusing on the transcendent from those dwelling in the "here and now." That he does this while bearing witness to the atrocities that have marked the twentieth century makes Simic one of the most powerful and accomplished political poets of our time as well. Simic is not the first to write poems in which objects play a central role, of course. One need only recall Stein's Tender Buttons or Williams' rain-slicked wheel barrow to recognize that the object poem comprises a rich part of the poetic tradition. The prose poem, in particular, enjoys a history filled with a curious tendency toward objects. That a poet like Simic, who once disclosed that the word "it" was to him "the most interesting word in the language" (NLH 218), has turned his attention in recent years to the genre of the prose poem is both significant and somehow inevitable. Michael Delville, in his groundbreaking study The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre, points out in the book's introduction that object poems are "emblematic of the preoccupation with objects that characterizes the work of a number of major representatives of the contemporary prose poem, such as Gertrude Stein and Francis Ponge" (16). He is, however, cautious about making claims for this hybrid genre, pointing out that any claims made for the prose poem could also adhere to contemporaneous claims about poetry or prose as well. Further, Delville points out that since Baudelaire's Paris Spleen appeared in 1869 - often considered the first representative of the form in the Western canon - the proliferation of practitioners of the form and almost as many trends make "any attempt at a single, monolithic definition of the genre ..
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